After losing father and nearly quitting, Desert Mirage football player returns to field and grabs national spotlight

After his incredible game Friday against La Quinta with two interceptions and the game-tying field goal, Palm Desert junior Jacob McIlroy was voted our Week 9 Friday Night Hero.
Omar Ornelas, The Desert Sun

Manny Ridge trucks his way in for a new set of downs. The Desert Mirage varsity football team won Friday's home conference game against Desert Hot Springs by a score of 35-27.(Photo: Brandon Magpantay)

Manny Ridge would love to play both ways on the Desert Mirage High School football team. On a squad that dresses just 22 guys every Friday night, you’d think having the team’s best player going full-throttle on both offense and defense would be a no-brainer.

But Ridge has asthma. So once the junior -- who’s part bowling ball, part jitterbug -- is done carrying the ball on nearly every play for his offense, he heads to the bench, grabs his inhaler, takes a few puffs, and readies himself. In the moments of calm few of the Rams starters get, Ridge takes time to think.

In the distance, Ridge can hear his grandfather barking in the stands “Manuel, go this way!” The Rams’ starting running back shrugs it off with a smile. He knows where he’s going. His dad laid out the plan for him when he introduced him to football.

“He wasn’t much of a football player, but he loved football,” Ridge says of his namesake father. “He got me involved, and he’d always say ‘Manuel, I want you to be a Raider one day.’ “

But how is a 5-foot-7-inch, 155-pound running back ever going to attract any attention from the types of college programs that could help get him to the pros, especially playing at a school that sits in the definition of “middle of nowhere”?

For a couple weeks late this summer, the motivation to pursue that ambitious dream all but disappeared. On Aug. 10 while at his grandmother's house in Salton City, Ridge received word that his father had passed away from a heart attack at just 45 years old.

Understandably, the news shook Ridge to his core, and just days before kickoff of the team's first game, the junior was extremely distant while at practice, especially easy to spot on a team of less than 30.

The Rams' star running back considered giving up the sport completely, saying he needed to “get out”, thinking that escaping the life he had in football would dampen the pain he felt from the loss of his dad.

But after personal meditation and long sitdowns with those closest to him, Ridge realized he couldn't let personal tragedy stand in the way of what he feels is his calling.

“It’s hard sometimes, but I have to suck it up and just play through life as is,” he said. “You have to suck it up and play through, even through all hardships. That’s what I’m trying to do with my dad’s death. That’s what I’m trying to do with everything in my life right now.”

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Desert Mirage High School Player Manny Ridge is photographed in Thermal on October 25, 2017. (Photo: Omar Ornelas/The Desert Sun )

Before the season began, Desert Mirage head coach Eric Perry sat down with Ridge and his mother Cheryl, and they implored him not to run away from the life his father dreamed he would have.

“His father wanted him to play and thought it was a positive influence in his life,” Perry said. “Kids have so many negative things to get into now, and here’s something positive, and he was a really big supporter. Me and his mom sat him down, but he was in a bad place.

“But we told him, ‘He’s up there right now looking down on you, expecting you to go out there and be the football player he thought you could be.’ ”

Entering this season, even Perry wasn’t certain what type of football player he had on his hands in Ridge.

The longtime coach who spent one season as the head coach at Desert Hot Springs in 2013 and several as an assistant with La Quinta over the years has a passion for hard-nosed, physical football. But until he could get his small squad into pads late this summer, he didn’t know what kind of players he’d have or what schemes he might be able to run.

Perry quickly realized the team had zero quarterback experience. Add to that Ridge’s compact power and the decision to be a run-heavy team was easy. But the running back’s first several series of the season as “the guy” against Indio in the season opener were shaky at best.

Inside, thoughts of his dad ran rampant.

“That half, I just got smothered in the dirt, and I was struggling to breathe,” Ridge said. “I went to the locker room for halftime, and Coach said ‘Manuel, we need you out there. We need you to step up right now. Your dad would want you to step up.’ And then, I felt my dad talking to me, and he told me ‘Manuel, just forget about me for one day and go out there and play your heart out.’ "

So he did, to the tune of 45 carries for 221 yards and two scores in the game – a heavy load for such a small back carrying an indescribable load. But it was only the beginning.

Fast-forward to two weeks remaining in the season, and Ridge leads the nation in carries per game at 39.6, according to the database of high school football statistics on MaxPreps. His 277 carries leads the state of California – his closest competitor trailing him by 21.

Ridge has played only seven games due to a hip pointer that kept him out of the second game of the season against Banning, while virtually every other top back in the state has played eight or nine. He ranks seventh in the country in total rushes, behind studs from Indiana, Alaska, Missouri and North Carolina who have already played in nine, 10 or even 11 games. Just 50 carries separate him from the nation’s leader.

Don’t begin to think Ridge’s quantity of work outweighs the quality, though. The junior averages six yards per carry and has amassed 1,652 yards at a tick of 236 per game, inside the top 35 in the country among players who have played at least five games this fall.

His 277 touches account for nearly 67 percent of the offensive plays for the Rams this season, and his 1,652 yards on the ground add up to nearly 80 percent of the team’s offensive production.

Isn’t that simply too much for one kid to handle? Perry thinks about it all the time, and he admits the Monday morning quarterbacks who teach for a living at Desert Mirage High School pepper him about it every week.

“Getting Manny the football gives us the best chance to succeed. Do we want to be one-dimensional? No, but we want to have something, especially with the culture of not being successful. We want to experience some success,” he said. “We do practice throwing the ball. Every coach on campus is an armchair quarterback, saying ‘Hey Coach, you know you really should throw the ball more’ and I’m all for it. But until we can execute it in practice, I know through my 20 years of coaching that it’s not going to work in a game.

“But sometimes I wonder, is it safe? I’m constantly checking on him. ‘Are you okay?’ … Constantly over the weekend, I’m trying to figure out what else can we do to alleviate some of that pressure, but it always goes back to giving him the ball.

“I remember carrying it 30 times a couple times in high school, and I couldn’t wake up in the morning. It felt like I was in a car crash.”

Manny Ridge running the ball in the middle. The Desert Mirage varsity football team won Friday's home conference game against Desert Hot Springs by a score of 35-27.(Photo: Brandon Magpantay)

After the Indio game, Ridge said he still wasn’t 100 percent certain he would stay on the football roster for good this season, but missing the Banning game gave him a chance to mull it over.

“It was so tough. I had everything at one second, and then I was losing everything, but I’ve got to keep on pushing because one day, I’m going to be on top again, and I’m choosing this year to be a big one,” he said. “I had to meditate on it. I had to realize myself that my dad did want me to do it, and now I realize I think the NFL is in my future, and I have to get there.”

But Ridge knows he’s not going to get there on his own. Ask him the puzzling question of how the Rams continue to come out with the same Ridge-heavy offensive scheme each week while he continues to rack up 200 or 300 yards per game, and he knows it’s not just his work. He lists off the name of every starting lineman, as well as his two quarterbacks, who often do nothing more than put the ball in Ridge’s stomach.

The junior also thinks the Rams simply play different than a lot of teams these days.

“Everybody is on the spread offense. They don’t get ready for offset. It’s weird, the way we play and practice,” Ridge said. “They might know what it is, but they don’t know how to stop me when I come running.”

But that can’t last forever. With Ridge coming back next season as a senior, he’ll see many of the same teams during league action. Teams will have had a full year to scheme against the back who said he dreams of playing for Alabama, UCLA or UNLV.

While opponents try to solve the Ridge riddle this next spring and summer, Ridge will have to remake himself into a new puzzle altogether. Perry said he needs to add more muscle onto his small frame and “live and die in the weight room.” Ridge himself knows his 4.6 second 40-yard dash isn’t eye-popping.

And while he makes a home inside the Rams’ weight room, Perry said he needs to inspire his teammates to follow him. The Desert Mirage coach said he’s watched this season as Ridge put his personal thought of quitting the team aside and put his body on the line each Friday night so his team could muster its two wins and stay competitive in two others. It’s time they make the same commitment to elevate him to the sights he’s set on.

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Desert Mirage High School Player Manny Ridge is photographed in Thermal on October 25, 2017. (Photo: Omar Ornelas/The Desert Sun )

“We’re a pretty tight-knit family, and I think all that really lifted him up. It’s not to say he forgot everything. We still talk about his dad all the time,” Perry said. “But when you only dress 22 guys, it starts to become a family, and you start to play for your family more than yourself, and you’re so far into it that you take yourself out of the equation and play for your teammates.

“But there’s rarely any scholarships for teams that win two games. He needs to expect a commitment not only out of himself, but out of others coming back. It’s going to take a commitment. It’s not something they’re used to out here. Kids look at football as an after-school activity for 10 weeks. … I’ll be their football coach, but it depends on the effort they put in.”

Perry is right. Ridge is far from forgetting about his late father, especially when he’s churning his legs between the sidelines.

Ask him about his biggest strength? It’s the anger he holds onto that his dad is gone.

On the sidelines in the fourth quarter against Desert Hot Springs two weeks ago, that anger emerged. The Rams, who once had held a 19-7 lead at halftime, now trailed 21-19 with 12 minutes remaining. The Golden Eagles, searching for their first win of the season, held all the momentum, while Ridge’s Rams, who hadn’t won a De Anza League game in nearly two seasons, were reeling.

Then, his offense took the ball back, sitting more than 70 yards away from the end zone. Ridge broke the huddle, and rather than needing to put his dad out of his mind like the opening game, he asked the elder Manual for help.

“I’m asking my father ‘Dad, please find a hole for me, and when you do, let me see you running so I can chase after you’,” Ridge remembers. “Not trying to sound crazy, but sometimes I do see him in the stands, and sometimes I see him out there on the field.”

Ridge broke out of his stance, grabbed hold of the ball, and saw a familiar face. Sprinting through the hole, he followed his dad 73 yards down the sideline, in pursuit of the end zone and something far greater: his father and their football dream.